


Blood Begets Blood

by meltokio



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 3 Choices, Angst, Character Death, F/M, In-game Dialogue, Purple Hawke takes a red option
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meltokio/pseuds/meltokio
Summary: It was nice to be happy for a while.





	Blood Begets Blood

"There's nothing you can say that I haven't already said to myself."

Of that she is absolutely certain. Before he turns his back to her, his eyes are so weary. He looks like a man dead already, resigned to consequences Hawke can’t bring herself to think about. What he doesn’t know, though, is that she blames herself more than she does that blighted spirit living in his mind.

“I might have understood if you’d only told me.”

“I wanted to tell you. But what if you stopped me? Or worse, what if you wanted to help? I couldn’t let you do that.”

Maybe if she’d just been a little more willing to listen, a little less flighty. Maybe if she’d gotten help for him, even though he’d only ever assured her that there was no help to be found. If only she’d been a better friend, a more calming influence. She tried every day to be the stitches that held them all together even as the threads tore and unraveled.

Hawke saw the signs—she’d seen them for years and had done nothing about it. She put it off to the side just as she did anything else unpleasant. She could never think her friend would be driven to this. But she had seen Isabela run away with the Tome of Koslun. She watched as Fenris took the heart out of his own sister. She was there when Merrill killed her Keeper and her Clan in self-defense. She had to have known what her companions were capable of. She just didn’t pay attention.

She stands at his back, her face an empty mask. She mourns the loss of Elthina, the sole beacon of diplomacy in Kirkwall—the one person who could have brought Orsino and Meredith to heel. She feels the weight of countless pairs of eyes boring into her skull, each with their expectations and their convictions. They’re all out for blood. They want this criminal—this murderer—brought to justice.

 _Justice is what did this,_ she thinks. _No, not Justice. Vengeance._

Hawke can’t seem to sort out her options in the wake of betrayal. She feels as though he never trusted her enough to let her in. He lied to her to get the materials to do this very thing. Through all that they had been through, the conversations in Darktown, the many days spent in his clinic under his hand. The chiding and the debating and the occasional bout of laughter. It had been all for nothing. It had meant nothing. She hadn’t been enough.

It is foolish and selfish and petty, but the betrayal is what guides her hand to the hilt at her hip. The betrayal and the difference between what she wants and what she should do. _He’s already put a dagger in your back. You need only to return the favor._

“And if I pay for that with my life…then I pay. Perhaps then Justice would at least be free.”

Fenris is utterly unmoved. He thirsts for righteous judgment with the rest of the lot. He’s never given Anders much credit; the mage stood for everything he despised. But he had deigned to venture with him, had watched Anders’ back in the midst of battle. Anders healed Fenris’ wounds countless times, never once letting their conflicts of interest get in the way.

Aveline’s iron-clad morality urges Hawke to take action. The guard-captain has always seen the world in black and white, right and wrong, fair and unfair. Hawke hadn’t hoped for anything less. The city Aveline now called home, the guards she’d come to see as family, were in danger. People were dead. All for a vision. All for a dream.

Merrill offers a moderate solution. Anders is as capable as anyone. Hawke couldn’t count on fingers and toes how many times he’d turned the tide of battle in their favor. He’d helped them defeat the Qunari, a High Dragon, and the man who had defiled her mother. Hawke had grown accustomed to fighting at his side, always on the outskirts of the fray picking away at enemies from afar as Fenris or Aveline or Isabela slashed their way through the thick of it. When Anders was in a particularly sunny mood they’d joke and count well-aimed shots. Sometimes he’d even flirt and flatter—a glimpse at the man he was before he’d taken a spirit within him. On those rare occasions, if he tried hard enough, he could even make her blush. Those memories raked through her like knives through flesh.

Varric’s response is the only one that truly surprises her. He isn’t joking now. He’s not charming or diplomatic. He is angry. Fuming. She has only rarely heard his voice take on such a sharp tone. Hawke agrees with him: she simply wants to walk out. Leave this all up to someone else. Let Meredith and Orsino slaughter each other and the whole bloody lot of them while she and the first friend she’d ever made in Kirkwall sail away to Rivain or Antiva. Two silver tongues would do well in those places—away from Circles and Gallows and Chantries.

“Whatever you do, just do it.”

A breath catches in her throat. This is real. This is happening. This is not some nightmare she’ll wake from with Brutus snoring at the foot of her bed. This is not a story she’ll share with Bethany when next she is allowed to visit. Her dagger is in her hand and she doesn’t know how it got there. Maybe a spirit? She catches her own thoughts. She must be hysterical now — splintered from the pressure of too many responsibilities. It was only a matter of time.

“You have to pay for what you’ve done.” Her voice doesn’t sound like hers, coming from lips cracked in the heat. Hawke has never been decisive or cruel or violent. She has never played into the idea of an eye for an eye. She’s only been particularly bloodthirsty when face to face with the blood mage who’d taken her mother and made her a monster. She feels as if she’s watching someone else place a hand on Anders’ shoulder, steadying her shaking knees as hot tears leave wet trails down cheeks caked with ash.

“I know.”

She chokes back a sob, praying to the Maker that no one can hear her; that no one can see her weakness. It has taken seven years to create this image of the fearless Champion and she would have it unblemished for just a little while longer. Even as her heart clenches tight in her chest.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad it’s you.” He sounds like he’s smiling. “It was nice to be happy…for a while.”

She tastes blood on her tongue before she notices how her teeth worry her lip. Hawke grips his shoulder tight, worried that if she lets go she’ll crumble. There are no more words. If she speaks, she’ll crack.

Her vision only clears when his body slumps over in her arms. The screams of soldiers and civilians keeps her from mourning. Adrenaline keeps her upright and fighting. She is a hollow thing; a ghost of a woman some used to call Hawke. Her daggers find purchase in the hearts of abominations and Templars alike. Orsino falls in a heap of fetid flesh, twisted and wrong. Meredith succumbs to her madness, driven there by paranoia and lyrium and power.

She returns to him, alone, at the end of it all. She sobs into his back, the vision of the Champion all but forgotten as the carcass of Kirkwall burns around them. She’s still there when the carrion crows come to feast.

It was nice to be happy for a while.


End file.
